The big question here will be whether Kathleen Sebelius herself will travel to Connecticut to smite the insurers personally, or the state government that approved rate hikes of up to 20% to cover the new mandates in ObamaCare. These rate hike requests wonât be the last, either:

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut requested a wide range of premium increases, which will take effect Oct. 1, to cover the costs of new benefits required by federal health reform. Higher prices mostly affect new members shopping for a health plan on the individual market rather than people who have group plans through an employer or some other organization.

The Connecticut Department of Insurance approved Anthemâs request without changes, including a boost of as much as 22.9 percent just to comply with one provision: eliminating annual spending limits per customer. But itâs unclear how much more customers will pay because of the variety of plans and the complexity of other factors, such as a personâs age.

New provisions mandated by federal law to start Thursday include allowing young adults to stay on their parentsâ plan until they turn 26, eliminating annual and lifetime limits on the amount of money an insurer spends per customer and mandating that insurers cover the full cost of preventive services, such as mammogramsand colonoscopies.

The looming question is how much those new mandated benefits, along with rising medical costs, will raise prices for health insurance next year. Insurers will submit a new batch of rate requests in October and November to take effect in 2011.

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This comes as a great shock to all of those business experts on the Left that kept insisting that additional mandates meant lower costs. To the rest of us, however, who actually understand risk pools and the difference between price and costs, itâs exactly what we predicted for over a year.

Jim Vicevich notes that Attorney General and Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal blasted the insurance companies without knowing any of the facts:

Connecticutâs attorney general, Richard Blumenthal (D) â who is running for Senate against Republican candidate Linda McMahon â did not exactly blow a gasket, but of course he thinks the rate increases are massive and unjustified. Tell me Blumenthal, did you even attend the meetings where Anthem proved their case to state regulators? Can you even speak to the actual cost increases or did you just pull page 57 out of the play book and read verbatim?

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Linda McMahon should jump all over this as an example of just how misguided ObamaCare was, and how clueless its advocates still are.

At today's presidential news conference, ABC's Jake Tapper asked about the recent CMS report suggesting that health-care reform will bend the cost curve up. I don't think President Obama's answer was particularly clear, so let me explain what's going on.
The key finding from the CMS report is that "relative to our February 2010 projections under prior law, average annual growth in national health spending over the projection period [2009-2019] is estimated to be 0.2 percentage point higher than our previous estimate." Over that same period, "the number of uninsured people is estimated to be reduced by 32.5 million."
So even in the most simplistic analysis, we're covering about 10 percent of the country and increasing spending growth by 0.2 percent. Seems like a good deal to me. But it's actually a better deal than that. Here's what the cost curve -- or maybe I should say cost line -- looks like:

What you're seeing here isn't the cost curve bending up. It's a one-time increase in the level of spending. That's the big jump in 2014, the year the exchanges and subsidies come online. So when you compare 2014 to 2013, spending growth seems like it's gone up a bunch. But by 2016, we're back to normal. In fact, we're better than normal: "For 2015-19, national health spending is now projected to increase 6.7 percent per year, on average -- slightly less than the 6.8 percent average annual growth rate projected in February 2010."
In other words, 2014 is a one-time increase in spending level as we get 30 million new people covered. After 2014, costs grow more slowly than they would without the health-care reform bill. And as some of you know, the major spending controls, like the excise tax and the Medicare board, only really start in 2018, so we can expect spending to slow even more in the years beyond this projection. And that, of course, is exactly what the Congressional Budget Office found when it looked at the bill on a longer timeframe.
So, the nickel version: Spending goes up in 2014 because we're covering 30 million new people and then down after that because we're controlling costs in the system.

I got sick and was able to go straight to Cedars-Sinai. Good grief they have valet parking! My doctor got me an ultrasound and MRI with no trouble and I ended up taking medication for almost 2-years that cost $50.00 per pill, twice a day and I paid $35.00 co-pay for each bottle ($10,000.00 - $35.00 paid by Blue Cross).

I have no complaints and can't understand why anyone would seek to tear that system down. Its unbelievable.

Of course, Blue Cross wants 30% more this year in premiums in California than last due directly to the policies of the Obama regime.

I got sick and was able to go straight to Cedars-Sinai. Good grief they have valet parking! My doctor got me an ultrasound and MRI with no trouble and I ended up taking medication for almost 2-years that cost $50.00 per pill, twice a day and I paid $35.00 co-pay for each bottle ($10,000.00 - $35.00 paid by Blue Cross).

I have no complaints and can't understand why anyone would seek to tear that system down. Its unbelievable.

Of course, Blue Cross wants 30% more this year in premiums in California than last due directly to the policies of the Obama regime.

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And I loved my credit card also. I had a credit line of about 20K, no annual fee, as long as I paid my balance at the end of each month, no interest. Very convenient, handy, no complaints.

BUUUUUUT, obama and dems thought I was being mistreated by the big bad CC companies so they decided to pass legislation so I could be treated "fairly".

Well, now my credit line was chopped in half , 50 annual fee, and the process to wipe out a fraudulent charge has become 10x more complicated.

And I loved my credit card also. I had a credit line of about 20K, no annual fee, as long as I paid my balance at the end of each month, no interest. Very convenient, handy, no complaints.

BUUUUUUT, obama and dems thought I was being mistreated by the big bad CC companies so they decided to pass legislation so I could be treated "fairly".

Well, now my credit line was chopped in half , 50 annual fee, and the process to wipe out a fraudulent charge has become 10x more complicated.

Thanks Obama.

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I have had only one card for many years. It has a 30k limit and I run about 3k per month on it (groceries, fuel, dogfood, restaurants etc). I've been waiting for the ax to fall on the limit but it hasn't yet.

They sent me a letter last year saying they were going to raise the rate to 21% (lol). I called them up and told them to look at my account and then told them I wasn't accepting the new rate. They asked me to hold on and then came back and proposed 7.99% which I agreed to though I don't really pay any rate because I don't carry a balance month-to-month.